"I have hurt my father," she said; "I have hurt my aunt. I have hurt and
snubbed poor Teddy. I've made no one happy. I deserve pretty much what
I've got....
"If only because of the way one hurts others if one kicks loose and
free, one has to submit....
"Broken-in people! I suppose the world is just all egotistical children
and broken-in people.
"Your little flag of pride must flutter down with the rest of them, Ann
Veronica....
"Compromise—and kindness.
"Compromise and kindness.
"Who are YOU that the world should lie down at your feet?
"You've got to be a decent citizen, Ann Veronica. Take your half loaf
with the others. You mustn't go clawing after a man that doesn't belong
to you—that isn't even interested in you. That's one thing clear.
"You've got to take the decent reasonable way. You've got to adjust
yourself to the people God has set about you. Every one else does."
She thought more and more along that line. There was no reason why
she shouldn't be Capes' friend. He did like her, anyhow; he was always
pleased to be with her. There was no reason why she shouldn't be his
restrained and dignified friend. After all, that was life. Nothing was
given away, and no one came so rich to the stall as to command all that
it had to offer. Every one has to make a deal with the world.
It would be very good to be Capes' friend.
She might be able to go on with biology, possibly even work upon the
same questions that he dealt with....
Perhaps her granddaughter might marry his grandson....
It grew clear to her that throughout all her wild raid for independence
she had done nothing for anybody, and many people had done things for
her. She thought of her aunt and that purse that was dropped on the
table, and of many troublesome and ill-requited kindnesses; she thought
of the help of the Widgetts, of Teddy's admiration; she thought, with
a new-born charity, of her father, of Manning's conscientious
unselfishness, of Miss Miniver's devotion.
"And for me it has been Pride and Pride and Pride!
"I am the prodigal daughter. I will arise and go to my father, and will
say unto him—
"I suppose pride and self-assertion are sin? Sinned against heaven—Yes,
I have sinned against heaven and before thee....
"Poor old daddy! I wonder if he'll spend much on the fatted calf?...
"The wrappered life-discipline! One comes to that at last. I begin to
understand Jane Austen and chintz covers and decency and refinement and
all the rest of it. One puts gloves on one's greedy fingers. One learns
to sit up...
"And somehow or other," she added, after a long interval, "I must pay
Mr. Ramage back his forty pounds."
Ann Veronica made a strenuous attempt to carry out her good resolutions.
She meditated long and carefully upon her letter to her father before
she wrote it, and gravely and deliberately again before she despatched
it.
"MY DEAR FATHER," she wrote,—"I have been thinking hard about
everything since I was sent to this prison. All these experiences have
taught me a great deal about life and realities. I see that compromise
is more necessary to life than I ignorantly supposed it to be, and I
have been trying to get Lord Morley's book on that subject, but it does
not appear to be available in the prison library, and the chaplain seems
to regard him as an undesirable writer."
At this point she had perceived that she was drifting from her subject.
"I must read him when I come out. But I see very clearly that as things
are a daughter is necessarily dependent on her father and bound while
she is in that position to live harmoniously with his ideals."
"Bit starchy," said Ann Veronica, and altered the key abruptly. Her
concluding paragraph was, on the whole, perhaps, hardly starchy enough.
"Really, daddy, I am sorry for all I have done to put you out. May I
come home and try to be a better daughter to you?
"ANN VERONICA."
Her aunt came to meet her outside Canongate, and, being a little
confused between what was official and what was merely a rebellious
slight upon our national justice, found herself involved in a triumphal
procession to the Vindicator Vegetarian Restaurant, and was specifically
and personally cheered by a small, shabby crowd outside that rendezvous.
They decided quite audibly, "She's an Old Dear, anyhow. Voting wouldn't
do no 'arm to 'er." She was on the very verge of a vegetarian meal
before she recovered her head again. Obeying some fine instinct, she had
come to the prison in a dark veil, but she had pushed this up to kiss
Ann Veronica and never drawn it down again. Eggs were procured for her,
and she sat out the subsequent emotions and eloquence with the dignity
becoming an injured lady of good family. The quiet encounter and
home-coming Ann Veronica and she had contemplated was entirely
disorganized by this misadventure; there were no adequate explanations,
and after they had settled things at Ann Veronica's lodgings, they
reached home in the early afternoon estranged and depressed, with
headaches and the trumpet voice of the indomitable Kitty Brett still
ringing in their ears.
"Dreadful women, my dear!" said Miss Stanley. "And some of them quite
pretty and well dressed. No need to do such things. We must never
let your father know we went. Why ever did you let me get into that
wagonette?"
"I thought we had to," said Ann Veronica, who had also been a little
under the compulsion of the marshals of the occasion. "It was very
tiring."
"We will have some tea in the drawing-room as soon as ever we can—and I
will take my things off. I don't think I shall ever care for this bonnet
again. We'll have some buttered toast. Your poor cheeks are quite sunken
and hollow...."
When Ann Veronica found herself in her father's study that evening it
seemed to her for a moment as though all the events of the past six
months had been a dream. The big gray spaces of London, the shop-lit,
greasy, shining streets, had become very remote; the biological
laboratory with its work and emotions, the meetings and discussions,
the rides in hansoms with Ramage, were like things in a book read and
closed. The study seemed absolutely unaltered, there was still the same
lamp with a little chip out of the shade, still the same gas fire, still
the same bundle of blue and white papers, it seemed, with the same pink
tape about them, at the elbow of the arm-chair, still the same father.
He sat in much the same attitude, and she stood just as she had stood
when he told her she could not go to the Fadden Dance. Both had dropped
the rather elaborate politeness of the dining-room, and in their faces
an impartial observer would have discovered little lines of obstinate
wilfulness in common; a certain hardness—sharp, indeed, in the father
and softly rounded in the daughter—but hardness nevertheless, that made
every compromise a bargain and every charity a discount.
"And so you have been thinking?" her father began, quoting her letter
and looking over his slanting glasses at her. "Well, my girl, I wish you
had thought about all these things before these bothers began."
Ann Veronica perceived that she must not forget to remain eminently
reasonable.
"One has to live and learn," she remarked, with a passable imitation of
her father's manner.
"So long as you learn," said Mr. Stanley.
Their conversation hung.
"I suppose, daddy, you've no objection to my going on with my work at
the Imperial College?" she asked.
"If it will keep you busy," he said, with a faintly ironical smile.
"The fees are paid to the end of the session."
He nodded twice, with his eyes on the fire, as though that was a formal
statement.
"You may go on with that work," he said, "so long as you keep in harmony
with things at home. I'm convinced that much of Russell's investigations
are on wrong lines, unsound lines. Still—you must learn for yourself.
You're of age—you're of age."
"The work's almost essential for the B.Sc. exam."
"It's scandalous, but I suppose it is."
Their agreement so far seemed remarkable, and yet as a home-coming the
thing was a little lacking in warmth. But Ann Veronica had still to get
to her chief topic. They were silent for a time. "It's a period of crude
views and crude work," said Mr. Stanley. "Still, these Mendelian fellows
seem likely to give Mr. Russell trouble, a good lot of trouble. Some of
their specimens—wonderfully selected, wonderfully got up."
"Daddy," said Ann Veronica, "these affairs—being away from home
has—cost money."
"I thought you would find that out."
"As a matter of fact, I happen to have got a little into debt."
"NEVER!"
Her heart sank at the change in his expression.
"Well, lodgings and things! And I paid my fees at the College."
"Yes. But how could you get—Who gave you credit?
"You see," said Ann Veronica, "my landlady kept on my room while I
was in Holloway, and the fees for the College mounted up pretty
considerably." She spoke rather quickly, because she found her father's
question the most awkward she had ever had to answer in her life.
"Molly and you settled about the rooms. She said you HAD some money."
"I borrowed it," said Ann Veronica in a casual tone, with white despair
in her heart.
"But who could have lent you money?"
"I pawned my pearl necklace. I got three pounds, and there's three on my
watch."
"Six pounds. H'm. Got the tickets? Yes, but then—you said you
borrowed?"
"I did, too," said Ann Veronica.
"Who from?"
She met his eye for a second and her heart failed her. The truth
was impossible, indecent. If she mentioned Ramage he might have a
fit—anything might happen. She lied. "The Widgetts," she said.
"Tut, tut!" he said. "Really, Vee, you seem to have advertised our
relations pretty generally!"
"They—they knew, of course. Because of the Dance."
"How much do you owe them?"
She knew forty pounds was a quite impossible sum for their neighbors.
She knew, too, she must not hesitate. "Eight pounds," she plunged, and
added foolishly, "fifteen pounds will see me clear of everything." She
muttered some unlady-like comment upon herself under her breath and
engaged in secret additions.
Mr. Stanley determined to improve the occasion. He seemed to deliberate.
"Well," he said at last slowly, "I'll pay it. I'll pay it. But I do
hope, Vee, I do hope—this is the end of these adventures. I hope you
have learned your lesson now and come to see—come to realize—how
things are. People, nobody, can do as they like in this world.
Everywhere there are limitations."
"I know," said Ann Veronica (fifteen pounds!). "I have learned that. I
mean—I mean to do what I can." (Fifteen pounds. Fifteen from forty is
twenty-five.)
He hesitated. She could think of nothing more to say.
"Well," she achieved at last. "Here goes for the new life!"
"Here goes for the new life," he echoed and stood up. Father and
daughter regarded each other warily, each more than a little insecure
with the other. He made a movement toward her, and then recalled the
circumstances of their last conversation in that study. She saw his
purpose and his doubt hesitated also, and then went to him, took his
coat lapels, and kissed him on the cheek.
"Ah, Vee," he said, "that's better! and kissed her back rather clumsily.
"We're going to be sensible."
She disengaged herself from him and went out of the room with a grave,
preoccupied expression. (Fifteen pounds! And she wanted forty!)
It was, perhaps, the natural consequence of a long and tiring and
exciting day that Ann Veronica should pass a broken and distressful
night, a night in which the noble and self-subduing resolutions of
Canongate displayed themselves for the first time in an atmosphere of
almost lurid dismay. Her father's peculiar stiffness of soul presented
itself now as something altogether left out of the calculations upon
which her plans were based, and, in particular, she had not anticipated
the difficulty she would find in borrowing the forty pounds she needed
for Ramage. That had taken her by surprise, and her tired wits had
failed her. She was to have fifteen pounds, and no more. She knew that
to expect more now was like anticipating a gold-mine in the garden. The
chance had gone. It became suddenly glaringly apparent to her that it
was impossible to return fifteen pounds or any sum less than twenty
pounds to Ramage—absolutely impossible. She realized that with a pang
of disgust and horror.
Already she had sent him twenty pounds, and never written to explain to
him why it was she had not sent it back sharply directly he returned
it. She ought to have written at once and told him exactly what had
happened. Now if she sent fifteen pounds the suggestion that she had
spent a five-pound note in the meanwhile would be irresistible. No! That
was impossible. She would have just to keep the fifteen pounds until she
could make it twenty. That might happen on her birthday—in August.
She turned about, and was persecuted by visions, half memories,
half dreams, of Ramage. He became ugly and monstrous, dunning her,
threatening her, assailing her.
"Confound sex from first to last!" said Ann Veronica. "Why can't we
propagate by sexless spores, as the ferns do? We restrict each other, we
badger each other, friendship is poisoned and buried under it!... I
MUST pay off that forty pounds. I MUST."
For a time there seemed no comfort for her even in Capes. She was to see
Capes to-morrow, but now, in this state of misery she had achieved, she
felt assured he would turn his back upon her, take no notice of her at
all. And if he didn't, what was the good of seeing him?